The Rocking Horse Winner - Essay Example

The Rocking Horse Winner Some people may question why we should read literature at all. With so many other means of entertainment – TV, radio, IPod, etc. – there’s just no need to read old stories anymore they argue. It would be surprising to these people to learn just how much literature can add to their lives by teaching them lessons they might not have learned through more commercialized media. Literature often makes comments regarding everyday life that can be applied across cultures and times to speak to new generations. This is the case with D.H. Lawrence’s short story “The Rocking Horse Winner.” The story seems simple enough, set in a somewhat affluent neighborhood and concerning a small family – a father, mother, son, two daughters and an uncle. Completing the cast are several ‘discreet servants’, among whom is the gardener, Bassett. The main action of the story is focused on the little boy’s attempt to make his house stop whispering for more money, more money, which is a refrain throughout the story. Paul attempts to make the house stop whispering by betting on horses whose names he’s learned while riding his rocking horse. He eventually turns ten shillings he was given by his uncle into £80,000 by the end of the story, but he dies in the achievement. Through plot and setting, Lawrence illustrates his point that material gain is insufficient for human happiness while he allows irony to drive the point home. The plot of the story, as illustrated above is relatively simple. The theme of money is introduced early, “Although they lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never enough money.” As the children are growing up, they are constantly aware of this tension, the bitterness their mother feels toward their father and the way she is unable to truly love them which is seen in her eyes. In his conversation with his mother, Paul discovers that luck equals money and money equals love. He makes this connection first seeing “by the lines of her mouth, that she was only trying to hide something from him” realizing that without luck one cannot be loved and then discovering that “she did not believe him; or rather, that she paid no attention to his assertion. This angered him somewhere and made him want to compel her attention.” The rest of the story details how he would ride his rocking horse in a trance-like fury, demanding it take him to the place where luck was and how his uncle began to get his secret out of him. It is eventually revealed that Paul rides his horse until he is given a name in the next coming race. Bassett and Uncle Oscar only know that somehow Paul ‘knows’ the correct name to bet on, often horses that have high stakes against them. Uncle Oscar assists Paul in transferring part of his winnings, £5,000 to his mother as a birthday present to help her pay off the bills. Although his plan was to give her £1,000 per year over the next five years, his mother begged to have all of the money at once and “there were certain new furnishings, and Paul had a tutor. He was really going to Eton, his father’s school, in the following autumn.” Although the family became wealthier, they were not any happier. As the reader has already guessed, the bills only began to whisper more incessantly and the pressure for Paul to discover new winnings became weightier. This pressure becomes greater as his mother starts to notice its effects on him and begins indicating she will not allow him to talk about racing anymore up until the night he rides his horse to find Malabar, the winner of the upcoming Derby. The odds on the horse had been high and Paul lives long enough to hear that he won, but dies shortly afterward insisting to his mother that he was lucky and thus deserves her love. The setting also helps to establish this idea that material goods are not capable of bringing about happiness in the human condition. Lawrence introduces the family as living in “a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighborhood.” While his mother had a small income and his father had a small income, it was “not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up.” Although they were not deprived of anything it seems, as the nursery is filled with “expensive and splendid toys,” the children are nevertheless aware of a persistent sense of want that takes over the setting almost entirely. “It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all the more self-consciously because of it.” It is not coincidental that soon after Paul begins his furious rides on his rocking-horse he graduates out of the nursery, “nurse gave him up. She could make nothing of him. Anyhow, he was growing beyond her.” In his adult pursuit of capital gain, Paul has grown out of the nursery of childhood and into his adult space although he still has a great deal to learn. Some of the action in the story also takes place at the horse races themselves, despite the fact that Paul is, in actuality, still a child. These are adult places of greed and corruption and yet Paul, in his strong innocence, has found a means of taking advantage of this system and discovering a means of acquiring the money his mother so desperately needs in order to feel human. But in acquiring it for her, he discovers he must sacrifice his own humanity. The irony of the story is what drives the point home regarding the connection between money and love. Although Paul’s mother was convinced throughout the story that she needed more money in order to feel human and capable of loving others, she discovered as Paul lay dying that there was something more. The story begins with this inability to love because she didn’t have the right things to fulfill their needs: “she had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her.” Although she was able to put on a very convincing false front to the rest of the world, “only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other’s eyes.” However, as Paul becomes more and more agitated in worrying about getting the rest of the money his mother needs before she can love him, his mother begins to understand just how much she really does love him. Seeing him all worked up, she feels anxious, “her heart curiously heavy because of him” and she began having “sudden strange seizures of uneasiness about him. Sometimes, for half an hour, she would feel a sudden anxiety about him that was almost anguish. She wanted to rush to him at once and know he was safe.” Although she sits stonily at his side throughout his period of unconsciousness, it is now painted as a different kind of stoniness as she is beginning to realize the treasure she is losing. As she learns of her financial gain, she loses her only son and remembers the words of her brother, “My god, Hester, you’re eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he’s best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking-horse to find a winner.” In making this statement, Uncle Oscar reveals that he is fully aware of the irony of the situation as the woman who couldn’t appreciate her treasure loses it only to gain a treasure she thought she’d needed. Through plot, setting and the use of irony, Lawrence continuously reinforces the concept that having material wealth is not sufficient to bring about human happiness. Although Paul’s mother thinks she needs more money all the time in order to make things right, she realizes at the end that she already had everything she needed in the presence of her family. While they live in a comfortable house with servants and a social life, the setting remains somehow wanting, constantly whispering for something more. Although Paul believes that he needs to satisfy his mother’s need for money in order to be loved, it is his increasingly apparent illness that begins to awaken true motherly feeling in her. The shock of his death, on the heels of his success, highlights the sadness of a small boy attempting to win thousands of pounds in order to achieve his mother’s love. Works Cited Lawrence, D.H. “The Rocking Horse Winner.” Read More